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July 10, 2011

Singing Rivers of Babylon…

The 1st year
and 2nd year In-service candidates had hosted a farewell dinner for
us as was the tradition since the Distance education program was initiated. The
usual rounds of drinks were served and a couple of dances and songs by
individuals and groups were presented and everyone around was joyous. The table
I had taken with my friends was getting noisier every passing minute and we got
some nasty glance from the people across our table but my friends were in their
seventh heaven and didn’t give a second thought on it.

The drinks began to take
its due course and people started passing some comment whenever a solo was performed
onstage. Some started grading the songs by saying “Choe gi beat da chikha theen matshu” “choe gi …blah…blah…blah...”

The coordinators asked
us to take our place for dinner and we followed them laughing all the way to
the food counter. There were some men in front of us who mentioned about our by
previous year’s performance where we had sang the group song “Rivers
of Babylon” as a tribute to our reunion ( most of my group friends had
come for the same course and we met after more than a decade). We used to sing
that song during our training days and thinking that there would not be a
better occasion to sing that song, we presented that song during our first year
Residential School.

We presented the same
song during our second year on the request of our seniors and we thought we
have had enough of the Babylon request but this time, the mates wanted us to
present the same song since it was our final RS (Residential school), thus we
ended up singing the same song for the third time.

The song holds a special
place in my heart because it connects me to my teenage friends who went on to
be my best of friends as the year passed and now in my middle age I can still
count on them and the friendship grows even more as our children are connected
through us.